Trust The Artist, Luke.

We've been away in Bristol for a few days, to visit our folks. I managed to get some work in while I was down there, but not a huge amount.

When we arrived Friday evening I had an email from the German manufacturers of Carpe Astra, they'd spotted that I'd accidentally reversed some of the art on the back of the punchboards, was I happy for them to continue, or did I want to submit a correction?

I'm more impressed with them as each day passes. Not only was this an excellent catch, but I got the following response when I asked when I'd get the games back:

We've scheduled your production for week 47, it'll take a day to print, a day to collate and then a few days to ship so you'll get them back either end of week 47 or week 48.

Now that's organised. I've also received an email yesterday saying that the tool maker for the punchboard die-cuts has had to round the corners on the triangle support markers. Was I happy with that? They sent me the corrected die-lines. Estimated diameter of the rounded corners? 1mm! And they still bothered to check I was happy. Hell! I wouldn't have even noticed! Needless to say I'm pretty chuffed with them at the moment.

I've got until the end of the week to get the art for the box and the rules to the manufacturer. Over the weekend I laid out the rules and sent them to a few friends for proof-reading. I've had some excellent feedback and amended them accordingly.

Next up the box. When I showed my local playtesters the box design I had cobbled together based on the logo and the cover illustration from the artist they were so-so about it. I'd made some 'interesting' layout decisions. The background I'd come up with was a starfield (like the one on Race for the Galaxy) and the logo was very clean, black and white. Neither of these now fitted very well with the rest of the art which has a grungy, steampunk feel to it. As a result I've decided to use the force artist. He does fantastic stuff when I just let him get on with it. So I've asked him to grunge up the logo a bit, and design a new box that's more in keeping with the rest of the components. Initial drafts look good...